Chapter 10
Chapter
Ten
S tella sucked in a breath. It may have been early in the evening, but there were already at least five hundred wealthy and influential Bostonians in the ballroom. The costumes ranged from court jesters to vampires, birds of prey to medieval maidens. Everyone had their faces—and motivations—masked.
As she scanned the crowd, the memory of her mother’s voice whispered in her ear, “Monsters come in all shapes and sizes, sweet girl. The most dangerous monster is the one who looks the most like you.”
Right. She’d always assumed her mother meant those words as a metaphor. Now, she wasn’t so sure. Her father did look a lot like her, at least in the eyes. Tonight, however, he could look like anyone. Or anything.
To the left of the ballroom entrance, a zombie wearing a purple velvet eye mask leaned against the bar. After battling so many of her father’s minions, the sight of this one, leisurely sipping on a Sam Adams, sent shivers down her spine.
She tugged on the sleeve of Ethan’s gangster suit. “Look to my left. That’s just a costume, right?”
“What?” Ethan asked. “ Where? Do you see David Hurley?”
“The zombie. At the bar. With the beer.”
“Oh,” Ethan said. “Yeah. Look at his hands. He either ran out of gray paint, or he lacked commitment.”
Stella took another peek just as the zombie raked his eyes over her body.
The ogling gave her a different kind of shiver. “Ewww.”
Ethan took her gloved hand and turned her in the opposite direction. “Too bad you can’t use a glacio spell and freeze them all.”
They’d discussed the possibility that morning. It would make it so much easier if they could simply wander the ballroom as if it were a statue gallery and casually unmask everyone until they found their man.
But they had concerns about whether the Collector would be impervious to the spell—plus the glacio spell was too much of a blunt instrument. It would also freeze their friends in place, and that wouldn’t serve their purposes.
Stella checked the front of her dress. “Let’s walk the crowd. See if I pick up the Collector’s scent.”
“This place reeks of perfume, cologne, and pumpkin-spice candles,” Ethan said, curling his lip. “Will you be able to detect anything else?”
“With any luck,” she said. “Come on.”
They waded further into the dimly lit ballroom. Rotating disco balls sent silver flecks of light across the crowd. Stella tried to stay close to Ethan, but they were occasionally split up as other guests traveled in the opposite direction, weaving through the crush of people either toward the dance floor or to the bar.
“ Uff .” Stella took a jab to the ribs as a Phantom of the Opera turned too quickly and caught her with his elbow.
Ethan grabbed her hand and dragged her another five feet forward into a small open space at the edge of the dance floor.
The band—consisting of a lead singer wearing a silver sequined gown, a piano player, a three-piece brass trio, and a drum set—played on a slightly raised stage set up along the wall.
They slipped into the first bars of their next jazzy selection, and Ethan shot Stella a wide grin. “They’re playing our song.”
“Our song?” Stella’s head whipped toward the band. Was that Ethan’s code for something else? As far as she knew, they didn’t have a song.
The singer swayed as the rest of the band played a dramatic orchestral introduction.
“It’s what we danced to at my fundraiser,” Ethan explained.
Stella tried to force a smile, but honestly, she didn’t remember what the band had been playing that night. She’d been too focused on getting a strand of Ethan’s hair, making a poppet, and striking him dead. The memory of that night still made her wince.
Still, she took a second to listen and nearly lost her breath when the lead singer crooned:
Those fingers in my hair
That sly come hither stare
That strips my conscience bare
It's witchcraft
Oh, for Pete’s sake. They’d been playing Frank Sinatra’s Witchcraft when Ethan dipped her on the dance floor that night? Good lord. She had to be the only failed assassin with a theme song.
“How ‘bout that dance you promised me?” Ethan asked, walking backward while he tugged her onto the floor.
Stella narrowed her eyes. She was sure they’d never discussed dancing.
Ethan’s lips twitched upward, and that’s when Stella realized what he was doing. He was recreating the night they met. The song. Her dress. Even his question. But they were here for work, not pleasure.
“Come on,” Ethan urged.
Stella’s gaze slid across the four dozen masked and costumed couples twirling around the parquet floor.
“All right,” she conceded. “ One dance.”
Ethan offered his arm, escorted her onto the floor, and spun her around before pulling her back so fast their bodies collided.
Stella’s breath left her in a whoosh , and the heat between them made her stomach flip.
Yeah. This was feeling awfully familiar. Ethan was definitely trying to recreate their first night, but it wasn’t like him to get distracted. It made her wonder if perhaps this dance was part of a greater plan.
“You can’t get me all hot and bothered if we’re going to look for the Collector,” she whispered.
“I’m not doing anything,” he responded innocently. “Just let me lead, and I’ll move us around the floor. While I do that, you keep your sniffer sharp. Get a good look at this place from every angle. The Collector could even be out here on the floor.”
Stella dug her fingertips into Ethan’s broad shoulder, and his grip tightened around her other hand.
They danced, moving in quick, graceful steps, then pausing to take in the people around them before gliding to another area of the dance floor.
“Anything?” Ethan asked.
“Have’t got a whiff of his magic yet,” she replied.
A woman in an elaborate feather headdress spun by on the arm of a courtier dressed in head-to-toe purple velvet.
Then Stella and Ethan were moving again.
At one point, he pulled her so close, Stella practically straddled his muscular thigh.
Heat flared through her chest as he pressed in hard against her mound.
“What are you doing?” she asked. “You’re ruining my concentration.”
“We’re just dancing,” he said.
“You’re so full of shit.”
Ethan tightened his arm around her waist and lowered her into a dip, bringing his lips so close to hers there was barely enough space for their breath.
Blue and red ribbons of magic—invisible to everyone else but powerfully palpable to them—encircled their bodies, and their paired magic sparked to life.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the ballroom, Jade and Izzy stood with their backs pressed against the wall, surveying the scene.
“Show me the photo again,” Jade said as she tightened the two short pigtails secured just below her ears. She’d never heard of Dyna Girl before Ethan handed her what he called the “perfect” costume. But she’d googled the character to get the look right. In for a penny, in for a pound.
There being no place to stash a phone in their skin-tight Lycra costumes, Izzy had brought along an actual four-by-six glossy photograph of David Hurley. She flipped her cape back off her shoulders, pulled the photo out of the top of her yellow leotard, and handed it to Jade.
Jade scanned the image, then refocused on the crowd.
Izzy sighed. “Remind me how a photo is supposed to help us when everyone’s wearing a mask.”
“The guy’s a lawyer,” Jade said, handing the photo back to Izzy. “He’s probably not going to come as something ridiculous. He does have a reputation to protect.”
Izzy slid the photo back inside her leotard, flattening it against her chest.
“A big shot like Hurley—or the Collector pretending to be Hurley—will probably come dressed as a king or a sheikh or something,” Jade said. He’d probably also be with a group of other respectably dressed people. And for some reason she pictured them hovering by the bar.
The crowd parted, and Jade got a glimpse of a military uniform. “What about Napoleon?” she asked. “See him there? Oh, wait… No. He’s too short.”
“Too short for what?” Izzy asked.
Jade looked up at her friend. Sometimes Izzy wasn’t all there, though her glitter make up was on point tonight.
“Too short to be Hurley,” Jade explained. “Ethan said he was about an inch shorter than him, so that Napoleon guy can’t be who we’re looking for. Come on, let’s walk the crowd. Look for someone who’s over six feet tall.”
They headed into the ocean of people and were only a few steps in when Izzy said, a little louder than Jade thought was necessary, “How’s your neck after that car accident?”
“ What? ” Jade asked without taking her eyes off the crowd. “What car accident?”
“Is it going to delay you filing for divorce?” Izzy asked.
This time, Jade looked up at her. “What the hell, Izzy?”
“ Shhh ,” she said as she continued to scan the sea of masked faces. “You’ll scare away the fish.”
“Fish?” Jade asked.
“I’m fishing for a lawyer,” she whispered, “so maybe you should limp a little.” Then, even louder, “I heard that crash was gnarly. What kind of settlement do you think you could get?”
Even wearing flat gladiator sandals, Antoinette had a couple inches on Jun’s five-ten. Did Cleopatra make a weird couple with some crazy-ass mad scientist, or whatever he was supposed to be? Hell, yeah .
It seemed most of the couples in the ballroom had coordinated their costumes. Stella and Ethan went together. Same with Abby and Stryker, even Izzy and Jade. The only thing she had in common with Jun was the size of their hair, except her ‘fro was perfection while his was some cheap costume-store wig.
So, not only did her pairing with Jun offend her fashion sense, it explained all the curious eyes as they passed through the crowd.
Or maybe she was just being straight-up paranoid.
And maybe she was being a little unfair.
Because, best believe, Jun was smart as a mug, and even though he couldn’t originate any magic of his own, he could amplify whatever she laid down. In other words, she may have been poorly matched, but she wasn’t poorly armed.
“Should we get a drink?” Jun asked. “Blend in with everyone else? I’m buying.”
And he was a gentleman. She could work with that too.
There were three bar stations set up, one by the entrance to the ballroom, one on the wall to the left, and one in the middle of the ballroom along the far wall. The dance floor was off to the right, and the band had just broken into Sinatra’s Witchcraft.
Antoinette only recognized the song because Gram had been a Sinatra fan. “Ol’ blue eyes,” she’d called him.
A lump rose up in Antoinette’s throat, and she pinched her nose to stave off the tingling sensation that was growing there. She didn’t cry. Not in public anyway. And even though this was a mission to catch a face-stealing psychopath, she wasn’t about to ruin her eyeliner.
“Maybe just one drink,” she said, “you know…to take the edge off.”
“Ve can sip zem,” Jun said in a crazy German accent. “Zey’re only props. Ve need to stay sharp.”
Antoinette glanced across the ballroom and made eye contact with a tall man dressed in a toga.
He held her gaze, sending such a slither of apprehension along her arms that she looked down to make sure she’d remembered to leave Stella’s blue snake at the store.
Abby’s phone vibrated in the deep pocket of her red velvet cape. She checked the screen. “It’s another text from Hawk. That makes three since we left the den.”
“What’s he saying this time?” Stryker asked, his voice muffled by the head of his big, furry wolf costume.
“Same as before. He’s checking to make sure I’m safe.”
“Because he doesn’t trust me,” Stryker said, tipping his head in an odd way. “God, I can’t see shit in this thing.”
“Of course he trusts you,” Abby said. “If anything, he doesn’t trust me.”
“You can be impulsive,” Stryker agreed. “And you have a history of finding trouble, even when you aren’t intentionally running straight into it.”
“Is that so bad?” she asked, smacking his furry shoulder. “I found the three of you. Some might say I ran straight into you.”
“So it worked out for you one time.” His tone suggested an exaggerated eye roll.
“That it did,” she agreed.
“Hey, is that Antoinette over by the bar?”
“I can’t see over all these people,” Abby said, rising up on her toes, “but if it is, she might have the right idea. It would make us more inconspicuous if we were holding a drink like everybody else.”
“All right, but that line is too long,” Stryker said. “Let’s try the one by the back wall.”
Abby took Stryker’s furry mitten paw—she hoped he wasn’t overheating in his costume—and they headed toward the bar.
They came at it from the side, near the corner where several men were deep in conversation. One of them was clearly dressed as William Shakespeare in a slouchy velvet hat, gold earring, and a long black coat over a shirt with a wide white collar. His mask was more substantial than the oval ones so many people had chosen; his included Shakespeare’s mustache and beard.
When Abby and Stryker were no more than twelve feet away, the bartender handed Shakespeare his drink.
Shakespeare pushed his mask all the way up to his forehead and put his lips to the glass.
Abby squeezed Stryker’s hand and yanked him to a stop.
“What is it?” he asked.
She jerked her chin in Shakespeare’s direction. “I see him.”
Stryker turned his Big Bad Wolf head slowly toward the bar.
Abby couldn’t tell if it was the real David Hurley or the Collector in disguise. Either way, he looked just like the photo Jun had shown them: same rounded nose. Same eyes. Same ruddy patches at the tops of his cheeks. Even that white streak of hair seemed to be peeking out from under his hat.
The maskless Shakespeare made eye contact with Abby, and adrenaline spiked her blood.
He slid his gaze from her to Stryker, then quickly repositioned his mask. He turned toward the bar, carefully set down his glass, and…
He bolted!
People screamed as he plowed through the crowd.
“Abby!” Stryker cried. “The windows! Signal the others!”
Shit . She almost forgot.
Abby clapped her hands over her head, sending out a sound wave that rattled the ballroom’s ten-foot windows.
That job done, she and Stryker pushed through the crowd, heading in the direction the man had gone. He’d gotten a sizable head start, but at last, the chase was on!